As complex systems with multiple institutional, civic, and religious topographies, early modern cities presented the foreigner with a beguiling series of mysteries. What tools, therefore, were available for gaining some kind of understanding of a foreign society that would allow travelers to connect their experience to home? This session explores the ways in which Italian travelers in the Renaissance built mental maps of cities by moving around and through them, using architectural description as a mode of penetrating the barriers that separated cultures. Such descriptions, based on habits of mobile viewing necessary for comprehending the dynamic nature of urban environments, deployed a common cross-cultural vocabulary (counting and measuring walls and streets) through which understanding the design of cities could lead to insights into the social identities of their inhabitants.
Presenter: